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Lot Essay
Born in Shanghai in 1935, Ku Fusheng first studied ink and colour paintings under Huang Junbi. Preferring abstract to traditional style, later on he came under the tutelage of Chu Teh-Chun. As a key member of the Fifth Moon Group, Ku's painting Expanding was selected to represent abstract art of Republic of China at the 1961 Sao Paolo Modern Art Exhibition. The same year, Ku moved to Paris and studied at the more liberal Académie de la Grande.
After settling down in New York in 1963, Ku launched the most transformative period of his artistic trajectory. He drew inspiration from athletes and dancers and became well known for his extenuated and elongated figures in motion. Ku combined traditional techniques with Western modernism vocabulary to convey palpable impulses throughout his canvas, as Yu Guangzhong once commented, "underneath the tranquil surface, one can feel the undercurrents of combats with and disappointment of life."
Ku's figures are usually without heads or facial delineation as his main focus is to capture the angular and rounded muscular lines in movement. In Two Nudes Dancing in a Sunset (Lot 382), the circular motion and the harmonious composition is reminiscent of Henri Matisse's La Danse from 1909. However, Ku renders bodily contour lines in iron lines brushstrokes while treating the background in a more abstract way. As for Runners (Lot 384), the minimalistic yet bold figures sets off against the tour-de-force vivacious bright red and blue backdrop, paying homage to Willem De Kooning's curvaceous, static and equally domineering nudes. Red Seated Woman on Blue Background (Lot 385) and Water and Reeds Girls (Lot 383) each depicts a singular female figure in a self-absorbing melancholic state. Done after his move to San Francisco in 1974, the latter assumes a surrealistic quality and generates a strange sense of hallucinatory dreamscape. Ku's lifelong engagement with combining Eastern sensibility with Western modernism in his kinetic figurative paintings is fully demonstrated in these four paintings.
After settling down in New York in 1963, Ku launched the most transformative period of his artistic trajectory. He drew inspiration from athletes and dancers and became well known for his extenuated and elongated figures in motion. Ku combined traditional techniques with Western modernism vocabulary to convey palpable impulses throughout his canvas, as Yu Guangzhong once commented, "underneath the tranquil surface, one can feel the undercurrents of combats with and disappointment of life."
Ku's figures are usually without heads or facial delineation as his main focus is to capture the angular and rounded muscular lines in movement. In Two Nudes Dancing in a Sunset (Lot 382), the circular motion and the harmonious composition is reminiscent of Henri Matisse's La Danse from 1909. However, Ku renders bodily contour lines in iron lines brushstrokes while treating the background in a more abstract way. As for Runners (Lot 384), the minimalistic yet bold figures sets off against the tour-de-force vivacious bright red and blue backdrop, paying homage to Willem De Kooning's curvaceous, static and equally domineering nudes. Red Seated Woman on Blue Background (Lot 385) and Water and Reeds Girls (Lot 383) each depicts a singular female figure in a self-absorbing melancholic state. Done after his move to San Francisco in 1974, the latter assumes a surrealistic quality and generates a strange sense of hallucinatory dreamscape. Ku's lifelong engagement with combining Eastern sensibility with Western modernism in his kinetic figurative paintings is fully demonstrated in these four paintings.